CES 2016

Synology makes network attached storage (NAS) servers. If your home entertainment life revolves solely around media you can stream—or you store you entire life in the cloud (on someone else’s remote server)—it’s unlikely you’ll have need of a NAS server. On the other hand, if you have thousands of digital images, movies, and songs in your collection, and you’d like to have easy access to them, a NAS server is one of the most essential digital storage components you can have. Fortunately for people with lots of files to store but not so much money, Synology introduced the DiskStation DS416j—a 4-bay NAS device the company has designed for home and small office use and budgets.

Several features make the Synology DS416j relevant for home multimedia networks and home theaters. For starters, the DS416j is fitted with a dual-core CPU with average reading speeds of over 112.82 MB/sec and writing speeds of over 101.2 MB/sec. The new NAS server is powered by a floating-point unit that not only gooses the overall capability of the main CPU, it also greatly speeds up the creation of thumbnails when photos and videos are uploaded to the DS416j. On the subject of speed, the new NAS comes equipped with a USB 3.0 port (and a USB 2.0 port) for external storage devices.

Importantly for home theater owners, the LED indicators on the front of the DS416j have four user-selectable and/or user-scheduled levels of brightness so the lights on the NAS won’t distract you from what you’re watching on the TV screen. Along with that, the internal cooling fan has three speed modes—Cool Mode, Quiet Mode, and Low-Power Mode—to help reduce noise.

The DS416j is a DLNA Certified DMS (Digital Media Server) and can function as the primary media server on your home network. The DS416j is also highly compatible with other multimedia devices. It offers support for Samsung TV, Roku players, Apple TV, and Google Chromecast.

Synology’s proprietary NAS operating system, DiskStation Manager (DSM), is found in all of Synology’s DiskStation (DS) NAS servers. The DSM isn’t for complete computer network novices, but it does make the DS416j one of the easiest-to-set-up NAS servers you can buy.

The Synology DS416j can accept up to four 8 TB drives for a total of 32 TB, although if used in a RAID configuration the total storage capacity will be less than that. The DS416j is currently available for $339.99.